Honeymoon With Death
What should be a romantic road trip into the Georgian countryside turns dark with mystery, suspicion and death…
She might belong in the 21st century, but Natasha jumps at the chance to take a road trip through Georgian England with her lover, Matthew Sheldon.
She hadn’t counted on the trip acquiring a loved-up pair of newly-weds or a young lady in distress. At least, she comforts herself, they haven’t encountered any dead bodies yet.
But mystery and dark secrets are waiting for them at the charming Gloucestershire manor of Baron’s Lydiard. The steward has vanished, a vengeful gang of poachers roam the district and a sinister stranger lurks.
Then Natasha makes a dreadful discovery and the Manor becomes the centre of an investigation into murder.
Things are dangerous enough with a killer on the loose, but Natasha has never been out of her own time for so long before and that may prove even more perilous.
The Clock House Mysteries Book Five
Excerpt
5 April 1811 Welhampstead, Hertfordshire.
It should have been our honeymoon, but we had decided that marriage wasn’t an option, so I had better settle for describing it as a romantic road trip. At least, that was what it had been intended as. The addition of a loved-up pair of newly-weds had been nowhere near the top of my list of things to take with me, but life throws these things at you. I have to say, it seems to positively hurl them at me.
Matthew had promised to show me his world and his work, so here we were setting out together in the month of April in the year 1811, almost twelve months after we had first met. Which would have been delightful if it were not for the fact that we were sharing our carriage with Tobias Cranleigh, Matthew’s younger legitimate brother, and his new wife Lady Eleanor who were on their honeymoon. The second carriage contained Molly, my maid, Frazer, Matthew’s new valet, and the Cranleigh’s valet and maid.
Which meant that the opportunities for amorous dalliance on the journey – as Matthew would put it – or a bit of hot, sweaty and acrobatic sex, as I would – were non-existent.
Naturally, young ladies in early nineteenth century England do not refer to sex, especially hot, sweaty etc, but then I am not from the year 1811. I am a twenty-first century female who happens to have fallen in love with a man born in 1774…
So it was, with a fully ticked-off To Do list and a few wisps of expensive silk from Lavish, Welhampstead’s expensive lingerie shop, in my luggage, that I set off, absolutely determined to enjoy myself. This was going to be an interesting, trouble-free and thoroughly relaxing holiday with my beloved. There would not be a dead body in sight.
Ever the optimist, that’s me. You’d think that after a year in and out of Matthew’s life that I would have learned better.
